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Seeking
116b. Preparatory Work. This with me is established, that
grace and the exercise of grace is given entirely by the Spirit of God
by his free and most arbitrary motions, but that his ordinary method,
notwithstanding, is to give grace to those that are much concerned about
it, and earnestly and for a considerable time seek it or continue to do
things in order to it. That is, it is the Spirit’s ordinary method first
to make them concerned about it so as to convince them that it is best
to seek it, so far as to make them seek it much, and then to bestow it.
Wherefore it is established that in those that are brought up under the
gospel, God’s ordinary way is thus first to convince them, so that there
is doubtless ordinarily a preparatory work of conviction. This
conviction that causes men to think it worth the while to seek salvation
is hardly ever a conviction of the worth of the reward but of the
dreadfulness of the punishment. So that there is doubtless in God’s
ordinary way a preparatory conviction of sin, that is, the danger of it,
before conversion. In the more unthinking people, such as husbandman and
the common sort of people who are less used to much reasoning, God
commonly works this conviction by begetting in their minds a dreadful
idea and notion of the punishment. In the more knowing and thinking men,
the Holy Spirit makes more use of rational deductions to convince them
that it is worth their while to seek earnestly for salvation. For God
makes use of those things, viz., good nature, a good
understanding, a rational brain, moral prudence, etc., as far as they
hold.
734. Preparatory Work. Preparatory work is from the Spirit of
God. It is a work that properly belongs to this person of the Trinity,
though there be no holiness in it, and so nothing of the nature of the
Holy Spirit communicated to the soul or exerted in the soul in it. As
the embryo of Christ in the womb of the Virgin Mary, though it had no
spirit or soul and so no proper holiness of nature and nothing of the
nature of the Holy Spirit in it, yet was from the Spirit of God. For it
was a work wrought in the womb of the virgin that was preparatory or in
order to an holy effect or production in her, for that was an holy thing
that was born of her….
1019. Preparatory Work. One might as strongly argue…. the
necessity of a distinct preparatory work of mortification of sin to go
before a work of conversion or sanctification of the nature, as for the
necessity of a person’s being brought off from their own righteousness
by a distinct preceding work of humiliation, but yet no sound divine
will say that sin is mortified…. before grace is infused. The truth is
that the case is the same with regard to the objects of his lust and a
man’s own righteousness. There is a legal work commonly preparing the
way for a man’s being weaned from each. A legal conviction to beat and
force him from his own righteousness and his legal repentance to beat
him off from the object of his lust, but the heart is not truly weaned
from either till grace is infused. |
